Date 09/01/2060, Location 37.97343, 58.39241

The team sat in the cab of the truck, Kai still pulling a pained expression at the damage to the cred-stick from topping off the fuel tanks. Consoling himself with a pack of biscuits purchased from the shop, he got the team back in the truck, and they headed west, covering the last three hundred kilometres back to their previous camp.

Along the way Tadibya and Aswon chatted about the spear found in the temple. After further study, Tadibya had come to the conclusion that the spear may well be a relic from the 4th age – the previous "up" cycle of mana, and the last time that Dragons were seen, along with Atlantis, Immortal Elves and all the other features that were once more a feature of the 6th world. It was also possible that this was from the 5th world – the "down" cycle, based on the age, which would make it even more notable as it would have required some truly great act to create it. Either way the thing was potentially remarkably valuable.

Aswon by this point was shaking his head emphatically, and had crossed his arms with a sense of utter finality. He informed Tadibya in no uncertain terms – and the rest of the occupants of the truck – that this spear was NOT for sale. Not now, not later, not ever. No. From his point of view, this fitted all of the key criteria from the stories recounted by the tribal elders. It was a sign. It was fate, and that's all there was to it. The spear had been Found. Capital F. It had been discovered whilst the team were on a rescue mission, and about to fight a great evil. It was a weapon of destiny, and was created for reasons just such as this. It had come to them, and that was Fate. It was not to be disposed of like some trinket to cover their living costs or to buy some new fancy bit of high tech gear.

As he talked, his hands punctuated each point, his long mane of hair whipped around his face, and his eyes were fixed upon Tadibya like a predator stalking prey. He was focussed and incredibly animated – and certainly most emphatic. It looked like no one really disagreed with him as a general point, but it was also interesting to see him so firm on a matter. He seemed quite happy to not have the spear personally – he was quite clear that if Tadibya wanted it, she had absolute priority. She was the spirit talker, after all. But if she didn't want it, then he was going to have it, and use it for the purpose it was so clearly designed for. He was handy with a spear, they had found a spear, and they had defeated evil. Fate.

Nobody else had any real opinion on this, so it seemed the default was that Aswon would keep the spear, and no – nobody was going to sell it. The roads were quiet, and without bandits or other interruptions, and just as the light was fading, they navigated back through the defiles and canyons and found the trailer, exactly where they had left it – untouched. The team moved the R series drone and the Arbiter into the trailer, having considered if they were going to need them for the job itself. With the two largest drones moved out of the back of the main truck body, and the EIS surveillance drone loaded into the drone rack next to the Doberman, there was a bit more room to move around again.

Aswon and Hunter checked out the radio detonators left for them by Rocket, and after a quick search on the matrix worked out that they probably had about a ten kilometre range. Not awesome, but not bad – it gave them some flexibility for deployment and sabotage of the pipeline. Hunter also pulled up the larger map sent to him by his friend in Copenhagen, and transferred that to the rollout screen. The team gathered around the map, labelled it up with a scale and started to work out the logistics of their attack with proper explosives rather than jury rigged RPG heads.

After a discussion about how more effective the new explosives would actually be, and determining that for any actual detonation Aswon would need to be the one placing the charges for them to be actually effective, they came up with a plan, and set about it.

First of all, Tadibya would summon a spirit of the land, and ask it to manifest for her to carry out her bidding. Spirits didn't generally like to manifest – they became wholly present in the "real" world, and as such were much easier to damage and possibly even destroy, than if they remained present in astral space only. With the spirit manifested though, it could physically interact with the world around it – including carrying prepared charges. The plan was to send the spirit over the course of the night to one of the pipelines furthest into the Dekita territory, and to lay the charge over the joint in a pipe and make it appear to be a viable bomb. The spirit would travel without rest, without pause, without fatigue, and would be nigh on invisible to electronic scanners and surveillance. It would be hard to spot, and knew the land and terrain intimately. They would repeat this process a second night, to get another pipeline marked up. When they actually launched their attacks, and blew up a few pipelines on the eastern edge of the territory, Dekita would have to scout them all out – and discover more devices on other pipe and have to treat them as live devices. It should seriously harm, possibly even cripple their operations for some time.

After summoning the spirit, Tadibya and it departed astrally, flying over the desert in a matter of seconds, and Tadibya showed it the first two places to plant explosives, then flitting back. It was ironic in some ways – the journey there and back astrally took only a few seconds, but for the spirit to make the journey in the physical world would take it all night – but it was the only way that it could get there with the explosives in hand…

Once the spirit was en-route, the team planned out their route to the pipeline west of Oglanly. They had identified a small mesa that the truck should be able to reach, which bought them within hiking distance of the pipeline. Hunter, Aswon and Shimazu would make the climb, and then Hunter would take up an overwatch position to cover them, whilst Aswon and Shimazu made the approach run. Once they had reached the pipeline they would set the demo charge, then retire, setting off the charge here via the radio detonator when they attacked the actual oil head the following night. That way there would be more than one place hit, and a very visible and obvious attack between most of the reinforcement troops and them.

The journey to the mesa was uneventful, Marius picking out a safe path through the rocky terrain and climbing the rough trails and wadis carefully, keeping the truck hidden from view as much as possible. He reached position after a few hours, and tucked in the truck to a concealed position. He relaxed and laid back in a comfy position, then launched the mini-blimp, and jumped into the control module. He floated up into the air, and watched the terrain under him as he slowly headed east, searching the terrain for Dekita security teams, looking for routes and planning their assault – and more importantly escape plans for the following day. Kai sat in the back with Tadibya, monitoring the sensor feed and the maps, and the other three grabbed the climbing gear and set off for the escarpment.

The climb was relatively short here, the climb up to the mesa having cut the vertical distance by fifty meters or so. Aswon swarmed up the cliff first, with a lead rope trailing behind him. The spell quickened to his tattoo focus made him stick to the cliff and his movements were sure and certain. He had no real issue reaching the top, even past the soft and crumbly sandstone. At the top he found a large boulder to tie the line around, and then gave the line a couple of tugs to signal to the others – trying not to use the comms if he could help it, just in case.

Shimazu and Hunter swarmed up the rope after Aswon, easily managing the climb with the rope to assist them. At the top, they crouched amongst the boulders and scrubby bushes clinging to the rocks, and waited until Hunter had identified and moved into a good cover position. He checked his assault rifle, then gave a quick thumbs up. Aswon pulled up the rope behind them, leaving it in a neat coil at the top of the pitch, ready to throw over the edge and allow them to quickly descend.

Hunter scanned through the scope on the rifle as he slowly traversed left to right, looking down the boulder field to the desert, and the pipeline beyond. He had the boost engaged on the low-light function built into his eyes, and was still hard-pressed to make out much detail. The new moon gave almost no light and the limited features of the desert made depth perception a problem. As Aswon and Shimazu started to make their way through the boulders and towards the sandy area, he saw a number of heads pop up, though – goats. A fair number of goats. He triggered the radio and kept the transmission short.

"Watch the goats in the boulders."

He saw Aswon and Shimazu pause for a moment and peer around them, then slowly start to move again, carefully placing their feet and moving skilfully. They weren't that far away from him, but even knowing where they were, he was having a hard time spotting them, and couldn't hear them as they worked their way through the jagged rocks.

Aswon and Shimazu picked their way forward amongst the rough terrain. Aswon would move to a position a few metres ahead of his current location, then pause. Shimazu would then move up to near him, concentrating on remaining stealthy, whilst Aswon watched the area. Once he had stopped moving, Aswon would then move forward again, whilst Shimazu kept watch. It was slow work, but allowed them to move quietly and carefully.

There was a flaw in the plan though. Shimazu was reasonably perceptive and intelligent, and well-schooled in observation from his training as a bodyguard. He was magically adept, able to control his body well, and having some abilities that bordered on supernatural. What he didn't have was any form of cyberware or vision modifications that let him see in the dark. Or any broad spectrum or sound filtering abilities to augment his hearing. In those respects he was a Mark 1 human being, that despite being an apex predator honed by thousands of years of evolution and incredibly adaptable – still was poorly equipped for things like hunting at night. That probably explained why he didn't see the kid, curled up in the lee of a rock, hidden in the deep shadow. And it also explained why he gave a start of surprise when he almost trod on it, and it gave a bleat of alarm as it suddenly detected what appeared to be a huge predator looming out of the darkness over it.

A few feet away, the kid's mother lifted her head and saw Shimazu standing over her offspring. Following maternal instincts deeply imprinted in her psyche, she lowered her head and charged.

Shimazu saw the movement and had barely started to react when the world just went crazy. Suddenly adrenaline dumped into his system, his combat senses went active and his reactions spiked as he detected a threat. Even his highly-tuned combat reflexes were not equipped to deal with what happened though. Humanity was not the only race to have gone through tumultuous changes during the awakening. Millions of species of animals had also changed during the return of magic, gaining powers and abilities that made ancient stories make a lot more sense. And this particular breed of goat was one of those species.

Enhanced muscles drove the goat forward at a rate that would give a cheetah wet dreams. It blurred in Shimazu's vision as it accelerated, his eyes completely unsuited to trying to track a creature that went from a standing start to a hundred and forty kilometres per hour in just a step or two. It couldn't keep that kind of speed up for long of course – barely a few moments in fact. But that didn't matter – it still reached the sort of speed normally associated with race cars. It also had a large and heavily reinforced bony plate over its skull, the tissue there thick and adapted to receiving incredible impacts.

The goat struck Shimazu in the midriff, driving the air from him as it hit him like a cannon-ball. The incredible speed imparted significant kinetic energy to him. His armour stiffened as if he'd been shot, and absorbed some of the impact – but there was no way it was going to absorb it all. Neither could he remain standing with that kind of impact. So brutal was the strike, and so unanticipated, that he had no chance to brace himself at all. The jarring hit sent him flying through the air, his cry of alarm piercing the night. His body described a parabola, arcing up to over his own head height, before descending and skidding through the rocks until he impacted onto a large boulder nearly eighteen metres away. He lay there stunned for a moment, before gingerly moving hands to his chest and feeling the large dent in his armour vest and the sore patch that indicated badly-bruised ribs. At least the armour had attenuated the hit enough that nothing was broken. As he got up, he looked around and realised how lucky he'd been in hitting the boulder – another metre or two of sliding and he'd have pitched over the edge of the cliff, and would be looking at a fifty metre fall. He wasn't sure that even Tadibya's magic could do anything about that.

Aswon ghosted back to check up on him and help him back to his feet, and they decided to skirt around the goats, trying to avoid any more mishaps. It took them a while longer to skirt the patch of ground the creatures were grazing on, but it seemed far safer. The last thing they needed was for a number of those creatures to take exception to their presence and kick off.

Aswon and Shimazu worked around the area, and thirty minutes later had reached the sandy area and started to move towards the pipeline in the distance. Now they were in the sandy area they moved faster, trading stealth for speed. With no cover to make use of in the rolling dunes, there was little point in trying to hide, and it made more sense to limit their exposure time.

Suddenly Aswon froze, and a half second later, Shimazu stopped too. Right on the edge of his hearing, Aswon heard something… the rumbling of engines perhaps? The faint sound of footsteps? He frowned as he concentrated, trying to work out what he'd heard – and wondering if he'd actually heard anything at all. He waited, and then picked it up again – not so much a sound, but now a feeling. There was definitely some kind of vibration….

The ground suddenly erupted, sand sliding down in a cone as something large burrowed up through the sand. Aswon and Shimazu leapt back, sprawling onto the cold desert sand as the creatures pushed themselves up out of the tunnel with multiple legs, large pincers snapping and ripping at them. Grasping for his spear, Aswon fought frantically to keep them at range, trying to evade their clutches. They were perhaps three metres long and a metre high and wide, black chitin reflecting the minimal moonlight from their smooth surfaces. Their large pincers, each a half metre long clacked together and snapped at him, trying to quest around his spear as he jabbed and thrust at them – not so much trying to damage them as to keep them at bay. His attention was drawn to motion, and he swung at the second scorpion as it lunged at him, evading the powerful pincers and the spear scraped down the flank of the creature holding it at bay for a moment. Shimazu had taken a moment and drawn his sword, and now swept in on the flank, and swung down with a mighty two-handed blow that cut through the carapace with a sharp crack, splitting it in half. His sword penetrated, cutting deeply into the flesh and doing tremendous damage. The creature went into a frenzied set of death throes, legs and pincers flailing around through the cold night air. It also distracted Aswon for a vital moment, as he backed away from the flailing. The other scorpion latched onto him for a brief moment with its pincers, holding him in place. The tail stinger arced over its back and the barb penetrated his cheek.

Aswon struggled and flexed, breaking free of the pincers again, and lunged with his spear, spiting the creature from the front. Again, he held it in place, and Shimazu approached from the side and dispatched it quickly with his sword. Gasping for breath, they both stood on the blood-stained sand, with the huge scorpions laying to either side of them still twitching in the cold night air. Aswon raised a hand to his cheek, gently exploring the wound there and wincing at the obvious heat and tenderness. Already his cheek had swollen noticeably, and he thought he detected part of the stinger still in the wound.

He pulled out a lighter and his combat knife, and played the flame over the surface for about thirty seconds, trying to ensure that it was at least sterile, even if it wasn't heated up much. He sliced open the wound and dug around with the point, trying to lever out the stinger blindly. He felt blood trickling down his face, but it felt odd, like someone was pouring hot water over him. Pressing the flat of the blade onto the raw wound, he hoped it was doing some good, then applied a large pressure bandage to his face and tied it off with sharp movements. His hands trembled with the aftermath of combat, and he turned to see what Shimazu was doing.

Shimazu had sawn through the tail of the beasts, taking their pincers and had placed them in a large plastic bag he'd had stashed in his belt, along with a few more choice bits of eye stalks and mandibles. He saw Aswon's expression and shrugged.

"Tads likes stuff like this. She can use it for… stuff."

Hunter meanwhile had adjusted his radio and gave a terse report back to the truck, advising them of the situation. Tadibya lifted from her body a moment later and flitted up to the area, and watched Aswon and Shimazu from astral space, keeping an eye on the area and looking for any more critters.

They headed over to the pipeline, and after checking for sensors and alarms and finding none, Aswon attached the explosive charges on the joint between two sections of pipe, hiding the trigger mechanism in the support pylon. He worked swiftly and quietly, and seemed focussed on his job – which seemed reasonable with two kilos of high quality plastic explosives in his hands. Shimazu watched him carefully, noticing that his hands were now trembling even more, and he seemed to be blinking a lot and sweating profusely despite the cold wind blowing over the desert.

"You ok, Aswon? You're shaking, and sweating."

"My heart is racing, and I feel all warm down the right hand side of my body, and my head is throbbing where that thing stung me. I think I need to sit down and stop moving."

"Give me the explosives, I'll go set the second charge, you rest. Just try not to move and attract any more of those things…"

Aswon handed over the prepared charges and slumped down to the ground, leaning against the support for the pipeline, whilst Shimazu trotted off into the darkness to find another join in the pipe that coincided with a support pillar. Tadibya flitted back to her body swiftly and called another spirt to her side, asking it to go and hide the bodies of the dismembered scorpions. Calling on a new spirit released the old one from her control, but it would finish what she had asked of it, and it would be some distance away by now anyway. Once the spirit had been dispatched, she projected again and flew up to keep an eye on Shimazu and Aswon, hovering halfway between them. Her spirit arrived, and started to pull the corpses down into the sand, hiding the bodies and any sign of the disturbance.

Just as Shimazu reached the location for the second charge, another pair of the enormous scorpions boiled up out of the ground, pincers clacking and tail stinger arched over the top of their backs. With a smooth fluid motion, Shimazu stepped into the gap between them drawing his blade with lightning speed and then spinning in a complex motion. The sword lashed out, stabbing one straight through the mouth and driving deep into the internal organs before swiftly withdrawing and lashing at the second, taking off the three legs on the left side with a whip-crack sharp strike.

Tadibya saw the creatures clearly on the astral plane, and realised that they were dual-natured – existing on both the physical and astral planes simultaneously. That meant she could affect them, even only being here as a "spirit". She gathered power and threw a ball of energy at them to stun them, but didn't throw all of her power into the attack – whilst in spirit form, it was far too easy to damage herself by channelling too much power through her nebulous form. She was disappointed to see the creature shrug off the spell with no apparent effect, but neither did she suffer any ill effects.

The second scorpion gave a squeal of pain and burrowed back down into the loose desert sand, whilst the first thrashed and squirmed as life fled from the body. Moments later the desert was quiet and still again – Shimazu watching with his sword drawn, ichor dripping from the point and clutching the explosives to his chest carefully whilst he scanned the desert. The desert spirit had finished burying the first set of bodies and unhurriedly made its way over to the fresh carcass and started to shovel sand over it.

After a few more moments of inactivity, Shimazu saw and heard nothing, and moved to place the explosive on the pipe. Aswon made it look easy, but it was harder than it looked. First he had problems getting the charge to stick in place, with it constantly sagging and peeling off. When he pushed down hard enough to make it stick, it seemed to pancake out and spread very widely. He had no idea what that would do in terms of explosive power, but there didn't seem to be a lot he could do about it, so he left it be.

Setting off back towards Aswon, he felt the sands shift again, and rolled quickly to the side before rising to his feet in a two handed stance. The wounded scorpion lurched from the ground, leaving a trail of fluids behind from its crippled legs, and attempted to grapple him with the two large pincers. Wounded as it was, Shimazu had no problem evading its clumsy swing and dispatching it with an elegant blow, leaving a fourth corpse twitching in the desert, to be covered by the silent desert spirit.

He got back to Aswon moments later, and saw that his condition was now visibly worse. He looked like he'd just finished a session at the gym – sweating profusely and looking exhausted and dehydrated. Shimazu helped him to his feet and watched him carefully as he began to stagger back towards the edge of the escarpment. The journey back took considerably longer, as Aswon struggled to move over the rough terrain. Part way back he slipped, and a foot impacted on a loose stone, sending it skittering into the darkness until it hit something with a meaty "thwock" noise, followed by a plaintive bleating. The goat lowered its head and prepared to charge…

Aswon saw this through his shaky vision, and lowered his spear until the haft was braced against a foot and the spear head was pointed at the goat – more or less. It was hard to tell which of the goats he should focus on, but then he realised it was ok – he could point one spear at each. He blinked a few times, trying to get the rocks to stop swimming in his vision, and then cursed as Shimazu stepped straight in front of him. The point of his spear was pointed straight at his back now, and if the goat hit him it would drive him onto the blade. He tried to move, but his muscles seemed strangely lethargic and everything just seems so difficult.

Shimazu stepped in front of Aswon, convinced that he was in no state to defend himself. The goat sprang forward, but he was prepared for the burst of speed and rate of advance this time, and swung his blade down hard on the head even as he sidestepped. The blow caught the goat straight across the brow, slicing through the flesh but then hitting the bony carapace and reverberating almost hard enough to make him drop the blade. Whatever the stuff was made of, it was harder than body armour – it was like swinging his sword into a building or a tank, for all the good it did him. All he achieved was to make a wide cut that bled freely, but he didn't seem to have harmed it significantly.

With blood pouring down its face, the goat bounded away into the darkness, still doing over a hundred kilometres per hour. A moment later a sound shattered the night air, as if a giant gong had been hit with an enormous hammer. Or as if a goat travelling at high speed with a bony head had hit a strong metal pipe at high velocity…

The spirit appeared at a command from Tadibya, and held Aswon steady as Shimazu tied him to the rope, and then lowered him down the cliff, following quickly afterwards. Hunter remained in position, watching to ensure that nothing was following them, and their explosives were not noticed. At the bottom, Shimazu untied Aswon and helped him back to the truck, again assisted by the spirit. Kai and Tadibya were waiting at the truck, pulling the tall Nigerian up and into the truck, and casting worried glances at each other as they felt the heat of his skin and the rapid but thready pulse.

Gathering breath, Tadibya channelled mana through her hands into his cheek, the golden light bathing his face in a healing glow that removed all sign of the sting wound. It did nothing for his condition otherwise, and prompted a question from Kai

"Why hasn't it healed him? He's still burning up, and his pulse is over two hundred according to the med-kit!"

"Magic doesn't work like that, Kai. It's very literal. A healing spell heals damage – it doesn't cure poison. It doesn't stop disease. It only removes the effects of those things once they've happened. I'm guessing that thing has some horrible venom or toxin, and its running riot in his body – but I don't have any magic that can fix that."

Shimazu had been rummaging around in his bag for something, and approached them with a small vial.

"Here – give him this? It might help"

Kai took the small brown plastic bottle with the dropper top, and examined it.

"What is it?"

"Remember that guy we found in Quba, near the garages? The one that was trying to kidnap that little girl? Well, this was the drug he was using. Someone said it was a date-rape drug? But it will make him go all relaxed right, and slow him down?"

Kai grabbed the bottle and clapped Shimazu on the shoulder, and quickly administered the drug to Aswon. Within a few seconds, it had a small but noticeable effect. The left hand side of Aswon's face fell, as his muscles relaxed and sagged, and the tremors on the right lessened for a moment. The readout on the med-kit stabilised and then dropped slightly, but soon picked back up and continued to rise until his heart rate was back up over two hundred again.

Kai shook his head, and applied some more of the drug, and then rummaged around in the med-kit and pulled out a large plastic coated disc. Peeling the protective seal off, he slapped the patch onto the side of Aswon's neck, and watched the readings like a hawk. Within moments the powerful drugs went to work, sedating and calming the body, and fighting against the effects of the neurotoxin.

The heart rate continued to hover at just over two hundred… but climbed no higher. Worryingly, neither did it fall, but at least it got no worse. Kai got some cold water into a spray bottle and started to mist it over him, and got the doors open and the blowers working, encouraging evaporation and hoping that would both help cool him down, and lower his heart rate further.

They watched him carefully, hoping that the venom would not have any further effects on his body, and Aswon lay trembling on the bunk, hallucinations now in full swing.